: After a gap of three months, Sri Dhandayuthapaniswamy Temple administration has resumed rope car service to the hill temple here on Thursday.
Now the pilgrims will have additional transport facility, besides traditional winch cars to reach the hill station from the plains.
On the first day itself, more than 3,000 pilgrims travelled in the rope car.
The rope car station was closed three months ago for maintenance work. But the repair and maintenance work prolonged, owing to delay in identifying high quality rope.
Initially, the technical crew fitted an imported cable for carrying cabins to the hill. But it did not function well. It had a teething trouble in the cable operation. Strange noise from the rope was heard during the trial run a few months ago. The technical team refused to open the rope car station and started searching for a suitable iron rope. Later, they fitted new cables and conducted trials successfully on Wednesday . After the completion of trial, rope car service resumed. The temple administration struggled to manage heavy crowd with just two winches. The worst-affected were old and aged pilgrims. They had to wait for hours at the winch station to reach the hill temple. The travel time of the winch was also very long when compared to the rope car.
With the commencement of Sabarimala season, the number of pilgrims coming to the hill temple went up to many thousands this month.
